Aina Saarenpää
Aina Saarenpää D. O. B: '12th August, 1983 '''Gender: '''Female '''Marital Status: '''Single. '''Last Known Location: 'New York City, NY 'Occupation: 'Company Agent 'Power (If DNA Alternate): '''Temporal Control & Superhuman Durability Personality As an individual, Aina is head-scratchingly complex, and she intends to keep it that way. Perhaps the most defining aspect of her personality is her self-confidence and willpower. Aina has been an incredibly hard working and indepedent person for the vast majority of her teenage and adult life, and exhibits a remarkable amount of belief in herself and her ambitions. She is a woman who knows, in absolute terms, what she wants and is absolutely determined that she will be able to get it. Never in her life has Aina been a person to simply just get up. Without her unique fusion of talent, and the desire to use it, she would have never been able to climb to the top of her profession in such a short amount of time, in such a seemingly effortless manner. Having been deprived of her parents from a very early age, and with no siblings to speak of, Aina got used to the idea of solitude very quickly. Rather than fold and rely upon others in order to survive, Aina brought herself up strong, deciding that she would forge a place for herself in the world one way or the other. She is a great believer in the ability of a person to change and shape their own destiny, and does not think for a second that a person should ever feel bound to their fate because of unfortunate circumstances. Aina prefers to be reliant on one person and one person only, herself. Loneliness for her does not come into it, she has convinced herself that she doesn't need someone else to justify her existence. She enjoys what she does for a living and the independence it gives her, and she is not prepared to allow emotional connections that she views as insignificant to stand in her way. Ambition forms a core part of her personality. In almost every aspect of her life, Aina wishes to be the best of the best. She is almost tireless in this sense, she will stop at nothing to accomplish her goals. With a ferocious training regime that most professional atheletes would find intolerable, Aina keeps herself at the peak of human physical fitness, and it wouldn't be a stretch to suggest that if she were to suddenly consider a career change and wanted to participate in any form of athletic sport, her sheer determination would be enough to guarantee her some sort of success. She is always striving to improve herself, whether it be by exercise or learning a new skill or language. With her own ruthless dedication to her ambitions, comes a sense of superiority over those who she feels do not put in an effort to make the most out of their lives. Aina is by no means arrogant, when she says that she is the best at what she does, she genuinely means it as a fact. In conversation, Aina can be very different depending on who she is talking to, and more importantly, why she is talking to them. Her life is always largely dictated by schedule and procedure, to such an extent that she can at times be something of a social chameleon, effortlessly taking on new roles and then shrugging them off a few hours later whne they are no longer necessary. If it would be beneficial to her to flirt with a man, perhaps whilst undercover, she can come across as perhaps the most charming girl you might ever have the privilege to meet. Whenever the clock is ticking however, and lives are on the line, Aina can transform from that flirtatious angel into something quite different. Cold, impassive, utterly ruthless, almost machine-like in her precision and attention to detail. The manner in which she carries herself when dealing with her employees and allies is considerably intimidating, she conveys the appearance of someone absolutely in control, the person who will be able to get things done. Outside of her professional life, Aina comes across as being remarkably normal. The balance of her personality naturally sways towards introversial, but that is not to say that she is totally unapproachable and lives a reclusive life. When not on the job, Aina can be friendly, charming even, and if she happened to meet the right person, she would be very happy to talk to them about a whole range of subjects. For the most part, Aina attempts to avoid forging friendships, and has very little interest in dating. Her life is extremely prone to change, a call on a cell phone can lead to her having to pack her bags and disappear, assuming a completely new identity within the space of a day. For this reason, she is reluctant to allow people too close to her, for fear that she might begin to grow close to them, too. Out of choice and as a career necessity, Aina's moral compass tends to lean towards a very grey area. She has absolutely no qualms about killing when it is necessary. Her job has put her in the line of fire many times in the past, and when it comes down a choice between her life, or the life of someone pointing a gun towards her, she finds it a very easy decision to make. Aina has been involved in espionage, assassinations, sabotage, theft, and much more since she formally began her career aged 20 years of age, and very few of these things tend to haunt her. She does not consider herself to be a 'bad' person, she simply views what she does as business, nothing more. However, Aina would never harm a child, at least not knowingly, and prefers to work for those that she could be happy to be consider the 'good guys' more often than not. It helps her sleep just a little bit better at night. History 'Family Relations: Aina was born on the 12th of August, 1983. Her parents, Heikki Gustafsson and Kalle Saarenpää, were only around for the first four years of her young life, before they tragically perished in what was believed at the time to have been an airplane crash. Unbeknownst to Aina until later in her teenage life, both Heikki and Kalle had been involved in the secret intelligence business for most of their lives, with Kalle acting as a liason to MI6 and the CIA, and Heikki reporting to the KGB. The pair represented conflicting sides of the Cold War coming together, and although they had long since given up the business by the time of their deaths, the old enemies they made during their lifetime had not forgotten, or forgiven, them. At the time of their deaths, Heikki was 43, and Kalle only 32. 'Other Significant People:' Following the death of her parents, Aina was entrusted to Johan Hännenen, her godfather according to her parent's respective wills. Johan, a man who on the exterior could appear to be very hard, very strict, was in fact a rather caring individual beneath his harsh outer coating, and took to the task of raising Aina in his own way. Johan was by no means emotionally cut out to be a father, but although he had a strange way of showing it, he loved Aina very much, as much as somebody such as he could love, at least. The director of the Finnish secret intelligence service, Puolustusvoimien Tiedustelukeskus, for over twenty years, Johan had been the best friend of Aina's father for a long time. It would be from Johan that Aina would learn everything she needed to know about the world. 'Story To Date:' The first few years in the aftermath of her parents death, and her subsequent adoption by Johan, were very tough for Aina. She had barely gotten to know her father when he was still alive, and had only ever been attached to her mother. Whilst she had been able to form a loving connection with Kalle, and subsequently missed her very much, Aina had never known a true father figure. Johan wasn't particularly equipped to be her father figure, to replace Heikki, but he was the only person who could do it. Truthfully, the poor man didn't know what to do with the girl. He'd never been particularly lucky when it had came to women and had long since abandoned the idea of having children himself, and yet there he was, charged with looking after a rapidly growing, fiercely inquisitive child. Johan's original plan for Aina was for her to go to school like a normal girl. However, her natural intelligence drove her to continuously question Johan on what her parents had done, and on what he did for that matter. She spent hours engrossed in foreign dictionaries and books, progressively learning to speak German whilst demanding that Johan instructed her in English. Even as a child, Aina's determination and ambition had began to manifest, even if she had yet to discover the direction in which her burgeoning talents were going to take her. Following Johan's retirement after Aina's 8th birthday, he decided it was time that he told her the truth about her parents. Perhaps it was because he was getting old, had a dodgy ticker and thought that she deserved to know. Maybe he felt released from any obligations of secrecy now that he had retired. Regardless, by this time, it seemed that the Cold War was slowly but surely coming to an end, and Johan felt safe enough to reveal to Aina that her parents had been secret intelligence agents. "Spies?" Aina had asked him with wide, curious eyes, to which Johan had given a solemn nod. For Aina, the truth about her parents was very much akin to opening the page of an extremely fascinating novel. She had to know more. And so it was, that the young girl began to continuously bombard Johan with questions, demands for information that he slowly but surely became too weary to resist. He told her everything he knew about her parents, about the business. Told her a bit more than he really should have, if he was still alive to look back on his past. Aina had made up her mind then and there, when she'd first found out that her parents were spies, that she was going to follow in their footsteps. Johan told her that he suspected it was more than an air crash, and that had sealed the deal. If she had a chance to get closer to her parents somehow, by doing just what they had done, then she was willing to do it.. and maybe find out the true cause behind their death, in the process. By her tenth birthday, Johan was getting old. Into his late fifties, he wondered how long he really had left. If he was able to get into his sixties, that would be a bonus, but even that looked doubtful. He wasn't a fool, he'd lived a life of great stress, smoked too many cigarettes, eaten too many fattening foods. Johan wasn't the lean, mean man that he'd been when he was in his twenties. He felt old, and expendable. By this point, he'd grown very fond of Aina, and had decided that before he died, he would teach her everything he knew. Really, he should have told her to consider a different career choice, but the girl had such a fierce determination about her, such a belief in her ambition, that he thought it would be impossible to change her mind. Under Johan's close tuition, she learned everything there was to know. The tricks of the trade quickly changed in shape from obscure references and shapes, hinted at in spy movies that she had saw on television, to sharp, detailed notes flashed out within her mind. By the time she was fourteen, Aina was shooting milk bottles at considerable distances with Johan's old pistol, picking locks with ease, and learning to fight. She'd tried to go to high school, but the classes there didn't suit her. Finnish classes were just too.. slow. Math was too easy, and the only history she cared about was the history in her books back home. She felt too isolated from the rest of the people there. The children seemed so... childish. Immature, with no sense of purpose, not like she had. By that point, Aina had already became familiar with the fact that she was different than other people. Her ability had manifested when she was twelve, and had since then popped up spontaneously at regular intervals, until she at least began to learn to control it of her own free will. As she approached her sixteenth birthday, Johan didn't have long left. He'd been in and out of hospital for the past two years, and he knew he was going to die sooner rather than later. Aina knew it too, and sat silently beside his bedside as he related his last words to her. One last beseechment to look after herself, to stay safe in the uncertain world that was growing up from the shadow of the Cold War, and a letter.. a letter that would take her where she wanted to go. Johan passed away on the 19th of July, 1998. A month later, Aina had turned sixteen, and the big, bad world stared out at her with all the intimidation it could muster. She stared back, unafraid. The letter that Johan had given her would take her into the rookie ranks of the PVTK, and from there, wherever she wanted to go. Within two years, Aina had graduated from the PVTK training division with full merits, the youngest graduate to ever be admitted into the main ranks of the Finnish secret intelligence agency. For the next five years, she operated mostly as a liason to the UN, her services being loaned out on behalf of the Finnish government. One wouldn't think that she would see much action as a Finnish agent, given the neutral policy of Finland and most other Scandanivan countries, but Aina saw plenty, particularly working in Israel. Since then, Aina has officially left the ranks of the PVTK and has been working as a private contractor for the last few years. By chance, she was brought in to assist in a terrorist investigation into the group known as Suuri Kansa. This investigation made her cross paths with Hans van der Merke, a German BND agent who was looking into the group. Whilst talking with him, she noticed a strange list written on his desk. As it so happened, this list contained the name of the man she had been searching for all her life. James Short, the man who had her parents killed. Assisting Hans in his investigation of the list, she decided that she would stop at nothing to get to the truth and avenge her parent's death. The mysterious list seemed to be a prophecy foretelling the deaths of all those on it, and Hans himself was on the list. His mounting fear and loss of sanity proved to be a self-fulfilling prophecy in his case when he fired his gun at Aina in a tense stand off in a Vienna hospital. She was forced to kill him. Later, she would follow down the list and find James Short. Killing him, her murder of Hans then came back to haunt her, and she was left for dead in a gunfight bleeding out on Short's kitchen floor. However, Aina did not die. As it turned out, Company founder Angela Petrelli had other plans in mind for her. She had Company agents spirit the comatose Aina away to Mt. Sinai in New York. After being rudely awakened by a crazed telekinetic outside her hospital room, Aina has since joined up with the Company, being partnered with Spades Malone. Her power and considerable skill may yet prove to be a very useful asset to the Company. Miscellaneous 'Theme Songs:' *We're In This Together Now by Nine Inch Nails *Rooster by Alice in Chains *Side of a Bullet '' by Nickelback'' *Saturday Superhouse by Biffy Clyro 'Trackers': *Aina's Thread Tracker Category:Original Characters (DNA Alternates)